Author Archive

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova

Saturday, October 10th, 2020
The Biggest Bluff

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova chronicles her journey as a PhD psychologist and journalist into the world of professional poker. She starts with zero knowledge and experience and with the help of mentors and lots of hard work becomes a poker champion. While the framework for this book is the game of poker, each chapter features generalizations that we can all draw on to add quality to our lives.

Maria

A Prelude – Las Vegas, July 2017

  • We start with a story from the World Series of Poker, which is The World Cup, The Masters, and The Super Bowl for poker players. Anyone can enter as long as they put up the $10,000 entry fee. This can be a lifetime dream for many. As play continues Maria’s seat sits empty while the dealer takes the anti for each hand from her piles of chips and tosses her cards into the discard pike known as “the muck.” She is in the bathroom curled up in a fetal position on the floor after barfing her brains out due to eating some bad guacamole. At the time she understood the line between skill and luck. The message is that you can’t calculate for dumb bad luck and you can’t bluff chance.

Ante UP – New York, Late Summer 2016

  • Here we meet Erik Sidel, one of the top poker players of all time. Maria approaches him to see if he will mentor her for her experiment, which involves seeing if a psychologist with zero knowledge of poker can have success after spending only a year learning the game. Eric knows that most people who get serious about the game come at it thinking a deep knowledge of math is the most important attribute. He knows that a deep understanding of psychology is more important as the necessary math his not that hard to master. He also sees Maria’s language skills as another key attribute. (She is fluent in English and Russian, was fluent in Spanish and French, and can get by in Italian.) Eric accepts the challenge and it’s game on. You don’t play poker, you play the world.

The Birth of a Gambler – Boston, Fall 2016

  • Life is a gamble. It may not seem like playing poker, but in some sense, much of life features less control than you have as a skilled poker player. Here we have a conversation with Maria’s grandmother (Baba Anna) who is very disappointed that Maria is taking up poker rather than a “real job.” Skilled stock pickers do no better than chance in the long run while professional poker players routinely outplay amateurs. In poker, the best hand doesn’t always win. This sets it apart from other games. The process of betting gets your full attention unlike making a decision where no bet is involved. This allows you to benefit from life’s decisions as well. Accurate probabilistic thinking is rare, but it is necessary for success in poker. Like people who predict the weather and horse races, poker players get immediate feedback and have no one to blame but themselves.

The Art of Losing – New York, Fall 2016

  • Eric’s step one is to read the poker books by Dan Harrington, cousin to the golfer Padraig Harrington. Next, you need to watch streams with real hands being played by the best players. Sign up for the Run It Once a poker coaching site. Then start playing for real online for tiny stakes that can gradually get bigger. From there you can proceed to small tournaments and then move up to bigger ones. You need a balance between aggressive and conservative playing so that your opponents can’t figure you out. You also need to keep track of everyone’s stack size.
  • Here we encounter the importance of learning from losing. (Doug: The concept of learning from failure is found in many of the other books I have summarized.) You have to constantly think, analyze, and stay objective. This is hard to do. This means that you never take things personally as you treat triumph and disaster the same. Disaster can bring true objectivity. Eric teaches Maria that there is no certainty, only thought. There are no right answers regarding any situation without a greater context. Self-awareness and self-discipline should be your twin goals.

The Mind of a Strategist – New York, Late Fall 2016

  • Maria starts practicing online, but in order to do so, she has to take a train from Manhattan to New Jersey as online poker is illegal in New York State. She picks a puppy as her avatar and “psychchic” as her screen name. She describes a hand she loses and finds that she made a mistake by trying to copy a hand Eric had once and acted aggressively so as not to look weak. Time is an issue online and in real tournaments as it is in real life. In both cases, you want to use the time you have to think things through, but not act impulsively as time starts to run out. When playing you want to be the last one to act as that will give you maximum information.
  • The military analogy applies here. You need to know the enemy and survey the nature of the board in each hand. Like a general, you need to decide just how many of your troops you need to deploy. Everything from a scout to every soldier you have is in play. Your strategy cannot be predetermined. Another analogy is that of a jazz band where once it’s your turn you have to decide what to play.
  • If you only bet when you have top cards your opponents will figure that out and you won’t win much. You will lose more as you won’t often have top cards. This is why you have to bluff on occasion. Maria tells the story of getting an offer to write an article about what she was doing. She said no several times until she got an offer of $3/word. Like sometimes in poker, she got more out of her hand then she thought she could.
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Seven Top Tips to Keep Schools and Colleges Secure by Katherine Rundell

Sunday, October 4th, 2020

Security Cameras

Seven Top Tips to Keep Schools and Colleges Secure by Katherine Rundell

offers a checklist that all educational institutions can use to prevent crime. Modern technology makes this easier so be sure your school or campus is doing all that it can.

Our high schools and college campuses are primarily places where our young people go to learn, so we need to keep them safe and secure so that students do not have to worry about their safety. There has been a worrying rise in attacks on our college campuses and schools lately and there are many things that can be done to prevent these from happening. Here are our top seven tips for getting stronger security on campus.

1. Install a CCTV system

We recommend that you install lots of CCTV cameras in all corners of your campus as a vital security feature. You can check these regularly and they can capture any suspicious activity across the school site. They can also act as a deterrent for any potential intruders.

You should distribute fully functioning cameras liberally across your campus, especially in areas like stairwells, courtyards, and parking lots, where crimes are more prone to take place. Be sure to have cameras for each entrance. Ideally, you will also have a team of highly trained security guards to monitor the video and patrol campus.

2. Restrict Access to Campus

Be sure to restrict or limit access to your campus, or to certain parts of the campus, like lecture halls. This means that only people that you have authorized to enter, like certain faculty members, administration teams, and students, will be able to have access.

You can issue ID badges with a key fob or another security measure to ensure that this is adhered to. Your security team can make sure that nobody is allowed onto the premises without the proper ID or clearance. You should consider a sign-in system for the main entry point of your site to give you more control to screen who enters.

Around the perimeter, you should ensure the school is properly fenced with a high-quality secure fence. This will prevent intruders from entering and ensure all individuals entering are funneled through the entrances giving you a closer look at who is coming in. This also prevents young students from leaving the site without a teacher or parent present. All staff and students should have ID cards issued to them when they begin their time at the site. These can include a photograph to ensure that all school members are accounted for and you know exactly who is on-site.

3. Regular Patrols

If you are aware that certain areas of campus have a higher risk for crime, try to send your campus security to patrol these areas on a more frequent basis. Increasing the number of security staff, you have available in the evenings to check these areas is also a good idea.

Ideally, you will have security staff on campus 24/7 and have a security protocol in place, like using ID badges for entry. This will avoid unauthorized people from getting access to campus. It also ensures that any criminal acts that take place on campus can be dealt with and kept under control straight away.

4. Silent Alarms and Panic Buttons

You should place these throughout the site and tell all staff and students about their location. This means that the authorities can be advised quickly if an incident arises and allows the victim to ask for help without having to get out their cell phone during an emergency.

5. Create an Anonymous Tip Line

If any students become concerned about someone’s actions or have learned information that might lead to a crime, they can use an anonymous tip line to inform campus security without worrying about being penalized themselves.

6. Security Checks for All Staff

Most Western countries require all staff members to pass a security check before they can work with children. Make it a regular part of your practice to do full background checks on all new staff members for student safety.

7. Well Lit Campuses

It has been proven with research that criminals are more likely to act in darkness because there are fewer witnesses and reduced visibility. We know that darkness is an important driving factor in the rise in incidents of crime.

You can counteract this by installing, maintaining, and repairing street lights on campus to make sure that the site remains well lit at all times. This will increase visibility for everyone and campus security to be able to keep an eye on everyone.

Katherine Rundell is a strategist marketer for both Studydemic and Simple Grad, where she has already created a number of high-profile marketing campaigns. She writes content and edits submissions at My Writing Way. She can be reached at katherine.t.rundell@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineRunde2

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The Best Study Tips to Retain Information by Donald Giddings

Friday, October 2nd, 2020

Retain Knowledge 1
Best Study Tips to Retain Information by Donald Giddings deals with the fact that studying is an essential part of learning. No matter how young or old you are, you can benefit from studying when learning something new. Fortunately, the best study tips to retain information can help you succeed at whatever you do and he covers them here.

Introduction

  • For some people, retaining information is harder than it is for others. No matter how much you study, you may struggle to retain the information you are intaking. With the right study methods, you can increase the information you retain and improve test scores.

Best Study Tips to Retain Information

  • When it comes to studying, not everyone is the same. Certain study methods work better for some people than they do for others. However, researchers have found some of the study methods to retain information.

Hand Write Your Notes

  • Though in this day and age many people prefer to use laptops to take notes, writing done your notes with paper and a pencil can help you better retain the information. Writing notes by hand allows you to retain more information and get a better comprehension of what you are learning. By writing your notes down, you retain information for longer, allowing for better recall when taking a test.

Learn In Multiple Ways

  • When you have the chance, learn in as many ways as possible. This can include taking notes, listening to recordings, using visuals, and reading out loud. According to the author, neurologist and teacher Judy Willis, by learning in more than one way, you are further sealing that information into your mind. (Willis, J. Brain-based teaching strategies for improving students’ memory, learning, and test-taking success. Review of Research. Childhood Education, 83(5), 31-316, 2008).
  • “The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is. This redundancy means students will have more opportunities to pull up all of those related bits of data from their multiple storage areas in response to a single cue. This cross-referencing of data means we have learned, rather than just memorized,” says Willis.
  • Learning in multiple ways can also keep you more interested in the subject, as reading notes over and over again can become boring. By expanding your ways of studying, you can improve the information you retain. When possible, seek out demonstrations and use visual aids.

Teach

Teach Someone The Information You Learned

  • One of the best ways to retain the information you just learned is to teach it to others. When you translate what you’ve learned into your own words, you are further solidifying the information you learned into your brain.
  • There are many ways you can teach someone the information you’ve learned. Create a podcast, write a blog post, create a presentation, or participate in a discussion. Studies have found that by teaching what you have learned, you can retain up to 90% of that information. (D’Souza, S. (2020, May 28). How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn)

Practice Recall and Test Yourself

  • An important part of retaining what you study is by getting information from short term to long term memory. Changing short-term memories to long-term memories takes time. By distributing your studying over time, you can change the information you’ve learned into long term memories and improve recall when practiced.
  • Recalling what you’ve learned can be a more effective form of studying than just sitting there reading your notes. By testing yourself on what you’ve learned, you are able to dig information out of your long term memories. If you are wanting to engage in critical thinking and problem solving, you can draw on the information you have in your long term memories and from around your environment.
  • You can also practice recalling your memory by using flashcards and online quizzes to test yourself. When putting aside notes and textbooks, using recall to study can be a powerful way to improve memory. Purdue psychology professor Jeffrey Karpicke was part of a study that proved recalling things from memory was an integral part of studying. (Karpicke, J. D. (2017). Retrieval-based learning: A decade of progress. In J. T. Wixted (Ed.), Cognitive psychology of memory, Vol. 2 of Learning and memory: A comprehensive reference (J. H. Byrne, Series Ed.) (pp. 487-514). Oxford: Academic Press.)
  • “Learning is about retrieving. So it is important to make retrieval practice an integral part of the learning process,” says Karpicke.

Create a Stress-Free Study Environment

  • To improve your studying, make sure you have a comfortable environment that is free of any stress. Get rid of any distractions such as your phone or TV and find a quiet area away from people.
  • Essential oils can also be used to create a relaxing environment that can boost your studying. By using aromatherapy, you can boost your cognitive abilities which can lead to better concentration.

Improve Your Study Habits

  • By following these study methods, you can improve the way you take in information. They are designed to help you efficiently and effectively maintain the information you need to know. Good studying often goes beyond just reading your notes over and over again.
Donald Giddings

Green Living Zone

  • Donald Giddings is founder and editor in chief at Green Living Zone. A lifelong sustainability enthusiast, Donald is always looking for the best way to live in harmony with nature. When he is not trying out new eco-friendly recipes, he writes engaging content about green, sustainable ways to maintain your home, body, and soul, readily sharing his abundant experience with other green living aficionados.

Sources

Taylor and Francis Online

Practicing Memory Recall Boosts Science Learning

How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn


Scientific American – Short Term to Long Term Memory
Medicine.llu.edu Brain-Based Retention Techniques

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Tips for Helping Your Child Learn How to Drive by Craig Middleton

Wednesday, September 30th, 2020

Tips for Helping Your Child Learn How to Drive by Craig Middleton is a good place to start if your child is nearing the age when it’s time to learn how to drive. Even if your child may not need their own car soon it’s wise to get this document so they have if they do need it someday.

Learning to drive and getting your first car are major milestones in life, and the same is true of passing that knowledge onto your children. Here’s what you need to know in order to prepare your child for passing their driver’s test, getting a car, and approaching the finances.

Study Help

Help Your Child Study

Before your child can take their driving test, they’ll first need to pass a written test. This test is meant to instill your child with the rules of the road and covers things like how to successfully navigate intersection traffic and how to respond to the presence of a school bus. This kind of information can prove to be pretty dry reading, and there is a persistent rumor that reading the manual isn’t necessary or even that doing so is harmful to your chances of success. This isn’t the case, of course, because you’ll be held accountable for a variety of numerical information regarding things like fines that simply can’t be intuited. That means that you will need to ensure that your child is ready for their written test despite their natural teenage instincts. It’s important to convince your child to take reading the manual as seriously as they would school reading materials, and that means taking notes. Taking notes increases your child’s ability to remember new information, and those notes can be taken on flashcards that you can use to quiz them.

Exam Time

When it comes to preparing them for the driving test, you can consider teaching them yourself. However, it can be difficult to teach what has become second nature to you, because you often don’t even think about what you’re doing as you drive. If you’re unsure about your teaching abilities, or maybe you don’t have the extra time, it may be a safer choice to enroll your child in a driver’s school. This is typically a 30-40 hour course broken up throughout a few weeks. An instructor will guide and drive with your child to make sure they are prepared and well informed for their driving test. This option will also allow your child to take a practice driving test with the instructor before they do the real thing. Because of this, your child will feel more confident and less stressed.

Practice Patience

As mentioned above, teaching something is a whole different experience than learning a skill or performing the actions yourself. This can be frustrating for some, because much what you know like the back of your hand isn’t common sense like you may have thought. However, your frustration will make your child more anxious and, in turn, less receptive to the information you’re trying to impart. Instead, be willing to explain every detail and answer questions multiple times if needed. Try to put yourself in the mindset of someone who knows nothing about operating a motor vehicle so that nothing seems too obvious to warrant those questions. Most importantly, be aware that mistakes are an inevitable part of learning a new skill, so approach these mistakes from a perspective of understanding and remain calm.

Behind the wheel

Financing a Car

Motor vehicles can be expensive. However, getting your child a new car can be the preferable alternative because maintaining a complex machine such as a car can either require an immense amount of knowledge or costly visits to a mechanic. However, auto financing requires good credit, and that means that you need to have a good credit score in order to make that high cost more tenable on a budget. Likewise, if your child will be taking responsibility for paying for the car, they will need to work on their credit before trying to make a purchase. This can be done by getting your child a credit card, although this entails a certain level of risk. However, if your child can overcome his or her teenage impulses, a credit card can help raise their credit score, because their use of the credit card determines the amount of money they’ll owe. This means that credit card bills can always be paid on time if used responsibly, and that is how your credit score improves. Most young people, often regardless of credit, will require a cosigner with adequate credit in order to buy a new car, and you’ll most likely have to fill that role.

They Don’t Always Need a Car

You may feel pressure as a parent to provide a car for your child as soon as they turn 16, but this isn’t always a need. If buying and maintaining a car is too big of a challenge for your family at the moment, it’s okay to put it off. There are plenty of options to ensure your kid is able to get to where he/she needs to be on a daily basis. You can offer to pick them up/drop them off, they can carpool with friends, or take public transportation to school and work.

Even if your child never needs or uses a car through their teenage years, it is still vital that you emphasize the importance of earning a driver’s license. You never know when this document will come in handy. It’s a simple form of identification and gives your child access to renting a car as they get into their mid 20’s.

Teaching your child to drive will be an important moment not only in their lives but also in your own. For a teenager, learning to drive and getting their first car represents the first step into adulthood, and they’ll depend on you to guide them. These tips will allow you to provide the best possible training and prime your child for success.

Craig Middleton

  • Craig is a New York City-based retired business consultant, who is an expert in education and cultural trends. He has a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters in Education from St. Johns and loves sharing his knowledge on the side through his writing. If you have any questions or comments you can direct them to Craig at craigmiddleton18@gmail.com.
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Fun Exercises To Quickly Improve Creative Thinking by Ashley Lipman

Saturday, September 26th, 2020

Fun Exercises To Quickly Improve Creative Thinking by Ashley Lipman others a number of suggestions that you and your students or family can use to get the creative juices flowing. See how many of her tips you already use and consider which ones you might want to add to boost your creativity.

Getting Past Brain Blocks

There’s an old saying: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Many times you’ll set a day aside so you can get something done. Then you get all prepared for the work, and you can’t write a word, or record a note—or whatever creative thing you’ve set yourself to do.

Maddening, isn’t it? How do you reliably, continuously stimulate your imagination productively? How do you overcome constraining mental blocks when they backhand your productive day out of the clear blue? Well, for one thing, you need to separate what you’re doing. If you’re trying to force art, just stop; you can’t do it.

The best you can do is produce an approximation of your talent which has no vision behind it, and so no “soul”. However, if you are creatively involved in certain projects requiring your talent, you don’t have the luxury of awaiting inspiration.

Ideally, you should avoid putting yourself in a position where the artistic output of a qualitative kind aesthetically speaking is demanded of you. Realistically, you can’t always do that. So next I’ll go over a few ways you can creatively unclog your mind and get things done more quickly.

Creativity 1

1. Take A Walk, Keep A Voice Recorder With You.

A change of scenery can do a lot to get your imagination going. If you’ve been writing a story at home on your laptop, and your brain just won’t kick into high gear, maybe go to a local coffee shop that you like. If that doesn’t work, take a walk in a park with a voice recorder should any ideas come to you. Also, keep one near your bed in case you wake up with a bright idea.

Sometimes the ideas are too large for a voice recording, but sitting down with a notebook is a bit more inconvenient—still, for some, this is a better option. Certainly, it depends on your particular personality, and the things you’re working on. The point is, sometimes you need to shake things up a bit. When you do that, new ideas develop as a consequence of the change.

Creativity 2

2. Role-Playing Games

RPGs, or Role Playing Games, aren’t quite what modern people think of when they see the abbreviation “RPG”. Today, everybody thinks of video games, but RPGs started with things like Dungeons and Dragons back in the seventies and eighties.

You might run a fast little D&D campaign to reap some of the ideas from the experience. These are inexpensive and widely available in many different iterations. D&D mods exist which have fantasy themes, modern themes, and science fiction themes; so you’re not restricted to a “classic” approach.

You don’t have to rely solely on D&D as a means of role-playing, that’s just the most common option. Also, it’s a fun group activity. Similarly, though, you can throw a bunch of words in a hat and pull a few out at random to stimulate your imagination. It’s best if you have people write down words you didn’t think of yourself if you go this route.

Creativity 3

3. Meditation, Exercise, And Search Engines

In the morning, you should take the time to meditate. Now that need not necessarily involve an eastern religious practice. You can meditate on traditional scriptures if that suits you. You might meditate on political writings, poems, fiction, or just the outdoors before you. Different meditation motifs exist for different people.

Similarly, working out can clear your mind and give you interesting ideas. If you work out an hour a day, you’ll get ideas. Catch a few of those ideas and use them as fodder later on. The key here is isolating situations in life where the mind naturally wanders and using those instances to your advantage.

Everybody’s mind does this. Those who are the most creative have simply learned to harness the reality. But it’s easier said than done, and if all else fails, don’t be afraid of using search engines for ideas to help stimulate your imagination.

Creativity 4

4. Music, Journaling, Doodling, And Stimulating Conversations

Music can put you in a sort of emotional fugue where the ideas flow like wine. Journaling every day can capture old ideas you can refer to later when you reach a blockage. Doodling or freewriting can pop up concepts from your subconscious, making them available to your conscious mind as you go about getting ideas.

Lastly, stimulating conversations with unique individuals gives you the benefit of their mind and their subconscious as a field for idea mining. Keep the eccentric people close, and refer to them when you have no other recourse.

Clearing The Up Creativity Blockages

Take a walk, change the scenery, look into RPGs, meditate, exercise, utilize search engines, listen to the right music, journal, doodle, and have stimulating conversations. All these things can be used to help you think of things, and be imaginative. One thing you shouldn’t do is isolate yourself in the same routine continuously. Good luck. Thanks, Ashley. She can be reached at mark@outreachmama.com.

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